deviants/pink fairies/twink

...1966 has come to be seen by some culture watchers as the pivotal year in pop and its nearest affiliates, movies/theatre, the beatles were making pop into art with revolver, antonioni redefines the murder mystery through judicious use of the NOW, freeform pop image as seen through the fresh eyes of the young in 'blow up'...AMM have started making the avant garde 'accessible' to the beatnik thinkers who dig dylans poetry and want some sound that has to be deciphered and more importantly lived, an AMM gig (few and far between though they were) was something to be involved in, the 'music' was experienced full on, the stuttering crashing cacophony had to be reassembled in the head to find a distorted hypnotic buzz...by the following year a bunch of layabout drug takers from london who'd taken to calling themselves the social deviants were doing gigs wherever they could find a booking and making a loud mangled amphetamine crazed garage R&B freakout noise that just about annoyed all the squares and quite a few pop-snobs...they decided it was time and would be fun to make a record and being turned down by all legitimate record companies found themselves a rich young kid to finance them through an independent label (underground impersarios)...the said wax appeared in 1968 and was called ptooff! (popart), housed in a giant comic style spash sleeve that could double as wall poster, was a mixture of all that was going on around them, cut-up cinema verity collages/garage rock choogle with plenty of guitar screach (the first track (i'm coming home) is a rewrite of the 'gloria' words)/a blues rock extermination assault/attacks on consumer society/pig hatred, a general narcotic mess all delivered with 'stoned to the bone' street level confidence, it was a pure case of going in and doing the job...dangerous to the point that it showed that cats could go their own way, the route was open for the adventurer to find their own expressive selves...

...by 1968 more than a few heads were becoming disenchanted with the counter cultures lack of real positive vibes, the acid flirtation had run its course with many and they started turning on with methedrine to get a charge, to amp up the buzz and spend time in a hazey rush...to get the most off a hit they started using the needle, thereby getting an immediate hit, the use-once-throw-away hypo came very in vogue and those purveyors of bad taste the deviants weren't slow in noticing this change in drug habits and called their second wax, disposable, named after said paraphernalia (also another nod to the wasteful consumer society they hated)...more comfortable for cats who dig some musical type vibes, where the whole thing is more linear, but there's plenty of deviant malarkey to keep wasters and hooligans satisfied...some of the musical bits are supplied by having horns backing up the tunes a couple of times but this don't really interfere, this ain't no jazz rock, it's a deviant barrage but not an all out assault like ptooff!, still plenty of guitar noise and drum thump, echoed vocal calling the tribes for a revolution (or at the very least a call to loot the supermarket)...an extremely cool pummel of underground swill just ready to shake up the senses and set the city on fire, a shreik from the amphetamine basement...

...third wax from the devies and their last has always been seen as a bit of a let down, they were on the verge of imploding or at least getting rid of singer/leading light, mick farren and this LP was the result of too many drugs in the last 3 years, it all came to a fizzling halt...the tracks kind of sound as if they were throw aways or stuff that wasn't deemed worthy off putting on the preceeding two disks...the smash and crash that rumbled and roared on the others wasn't present, it was somewhat anonymous and that's not good for an unparalleled attack unit like this...it's not a complete wipe out and on the right stimulants it's a pile of good fun, but the reality of the situation is it can't really be compared to the others, if anything it's a stop gap to the pink fairies never neverland...
...micks first solo assault after the shenanigans that broke up the devies and put and end to one of the realist and best london underground rocking outfits...fueled on basement level speed, reefer and copious amounts of whiskey this outpouring contains off kilter 50's rock'n'roll tributes and hallucinogenic cinema verite trashed-out back alley avant rock swill that covers both sides of the biscuit...a really cool fly-on-the-wall peep at a long lost world...guests included twink and steve took and according to the chairman himself, was one of beatlejohns fave rave disks...

...when the deviants imploded and broke apart on their amerikkkan tour and mick farren got shafted from his own band the other three took up with ace looner twink and became the pink fairies and smoked up a lot of dope and took various stimulants and grooved around ladbroke grove and played many free gigs and smoked up more weed and grooved some more around ladbroke grove and smoked up plenty weed and grooved around albion playing free gigs and smoked copious hash and made a LP for a major record label who were desperate to find new progressive pop combos to fleece hippy wedge from unsuspecting students and street layabouts...what said record label got was this hotcha piece of chemical fun with reefered moments and some slightly more frenzied numbers...not as manic and freeform as a fairy gig but a cool piece of london street level rock with some 'finesse', that should not be held against it as they smoked up more dope and grooved around waiting for the elusive big time that was surely just at the end of the rainbow of acid fried dreams...

...incredible blast of top fairyness from back in the day, taped originally for finnish radio, this is proper nice sounding blowout of rocking madness, the type the fairies love...ladbroke grove freakout carnage coming all the way from the frozen north, psychedelic pounding and heavy riffing takes the listener into the smoked out patchouli zone where the walls wobble and the ceiling melts as the decibel ampage mounts and the guitars twang and buzz...it's so cool to be able to get some new prime era swill from these cats, it's jubilation with a fresh bong...

...heavy duty mind-melt from twink, psychedelia holding out for one last go round, backward guitars, sitars, chanting, channel shifting FX (always a plus) and generally great dollops of drugnacious tomfoolery smeared liberally into the very fabric...any cat even paying half attention is surely and certainly to get a contact high from this biscuit of delights, wiglifting and wobbly is the order of the day, like rolling around in a giant technicolour jelly, very existence slithering in warm gloops of trippy abandon...a near perfect assimilation of two combos-TOMORROW & PINK FAIRIES, (the studio fairies of the first LP) with paul rudolf noise explosion guitar slam, an amalgam of the '67/70 trippy timeline, effortless good vibes permeate the grooves giving off a life affirming warm glow of delicious haziness that's the easiest to get loose and lost in...

2 comments:

  1. Fake moon landing? C'mon...only dumb shits buy into that. Have an uncle that worked on the Apollo missions and he thinks that ANYONE who would believe the moon landings were faked needs to be put into a corner wit' a dunce cap awn and have rotten fruit thrown at 'em.

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